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Friday, July 08, 2005

More roosting chickens

It's not yet clear whether we'll hate Blair less or blame him more for putting us at greater risk by following Bush to Iraq...It hasn't come out of the blue--there is no blue for it to come from anymore. It feels more like the other shoe dropping, which brings a kind of relief: Though this was terrible and there may be more to come, everyone knows it could have been much worse. After the lies that took us into war and their long-drawn-out exposure, it won't be easy for Blair to use the attacks to whip up another crusade--though they will probably speed the government's identity-card legislation.

Jogo says:

This person isn't all THAT different from David T's old flat-mate at Harry's Place. Notice all the dark little Sick-Left curly-cues sticking out of the report like trip-wires. These people can't change. That's why there can't be a decent left.

So .... you began receiving chicken-roosting email later in the day. Interesting that you mention it, and call it by that name. On 9.11.01, I, too, received chicken-roosting email within a few hours after the planes hit the WTC towers.

I will tell you the simple truth -- it was those emails that nudged me over the edge. Those vicious emails caused me to burn the last shred of Left-membership I still felt I possessed. It was as if a veil had come off my eyes and I could see with utter clarity the true face of the Retrograde/Rural 60s Left, the Pot-head Left, the ANSWER Left, the Znet Left, the Taos Left, the Bolinas Left, the Dilletante/Unserious Left, the Academic Left, the Folk Music Left, the Clownish Left, the Addicted-to-Bad-News Left, the Unsavory Left, the Poetry Left and the various other Lefts I am connected to by bonds and affinities of culture, tastes, ancestors, family, friendships, acquaintances and friends-of-friends.

Some I said goodbye to that day. Others, I could not bear say a final goodbye to, and still can't. I went my own way. Then, a few days later, I think on the 14th, Christopher Hitchens' envoie-column appeared in The Nation. He gave me much courage, and I shall always be grateful to him for that. The following week in The Nation I read the denunciation and excommunication of Hitchens by Edward Herman and Chomsky. And then I knew with absolute certainty that I did not belong in the fellowship of The Nation, a magazine that I subscribed to, and that my father had subscribed to for many decades, and that had been part of my intellectual and cultural world since I was old enough to understand political thoughts.

Today I would be embarassed to call myself a Leftist, and horrified to be thought of as one. I don't know what I am. I don't actually have a political name.